


O'er These Mountains I Would Fly

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Series: Little Sparrow [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate POV, Alternate Point of View, Big Brother Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne is "Dead", Damian Wayne Has a Heart, Damian Wayne is Robin, Dick Grayson is Batman, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 13:19:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18550588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: “Nervous?” Grayson asked. They had been driving for over half an hour, and this was only Grayson’s fifth attempt at conversation. It had been an unusually quiet ride.





	O'er These Mountains I Would Fly

**Author's Note:**

> In celebration of my one-year fic-writing anniversary, I allowed followers on Tumblr to request an off-page fic snippet—a different POV of one of the scenes, a peek at what happened after, etc., of any of my finished fics.
> 
> This is one of those.
> 
> https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/184105188732/new-ask-meme-starting-here-because-it-popped-into

Damian curled his hands around the corners of the shoebox, positioning it in his lap. He tensed his thighs and pointed his toes against the floor mat so that his legs kept the box perfectly level. Then he straightened the box again.

“Nervous?” Grayson asked. They had been driving for over half an hour, and this was only Grayson’s fifth attempt at conversation. It had been an unusually quiet ride. This was the first gambit to warrant a reaction.

Damian clucked his tongue dismissively. “I am never nervous.”

That was a bold-faced lie. Damian couldn’t deceive himself, as much as he wanted to. He had been frightened the night before, when he had thought that discovery meant risking the life of the bird currently sitting on his lap. He looked down at the box and again studied the chick resting nestled in a nest of shredded newspaper and soft washcloths.

After finding them in Damian’s room, Grayson had taken boy and bird downstairs to the bathroom nearest to his childhood bedroom, calling for the butler Pennyworth as he did. Pennyworth, whom Damian still eyed with healthy distrust, magically conjured up a dusty roll of veterinary tape from beneath the bathroom sink, which did nothing to lower Damian’s wariness. The man was an enigma, and his mustache was suspicious.

Damian had expected Grayson to hand him the tape and be done with it. To his surprise, the man lowered himself to the tiled floor, legs crossing easily into a meditative pose, then asked, “May I have the box?”

He meant it genuinely, not as a veiled command, which was the only reason Damian approached without argument and settled the box in Grayson’s lap. Damian then settled himself as well, crouching close enough to see, close enough to snatch the box if necessary, but not too close.

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

Grayson’s jaw did the little pulse that Damian didn’t know how to interpret, but his smile came easily. His smiles always did, even when they shouldn’t, which was another reason Damian was wary of him as well. Much deviousness and ill will could be hidden behind an easy smile.

“Once, when I was a kid, Bruce and I found a bat downstairs. In the sunroom.” That he had truly meant downstairs and not the Cave piqued Damian’s interest. “It had flown in and freaked out at not being able to find its way out again, swooping and bashing into things even with echolocation and stuff. Bruce ended up catching it, but not before it’d banged itself up pretty badly.”

Grayson’s lips twitched at the memory, a softer, more wistful smile that creased the corners of his eyes. “We patched it up and brought it to the wildlife center, the same way we will for this little guy. I think I still remember how to wrap the wing.”

He looked up at Damian, eyes blue as the sky, an intensity behind their easy study of Damian’s face. “Will you help me?”

Damian nodded once, a brisk jerk of the chin. “What would you have me do?”

Grayson held the sparrow, broken wing pinned to its body, and verbally instructed Damian on taping the limb in a way that would prevent the animal from further damaging itself. Damian’s brow furrowed as he worked, focus narrowing to the pinpoint that was the sensation of the tape against his fingertips, the brush of the bird’s downy feathers, the flutter of its heartbeat against his skin. Though terrified of somehow injuring the creature further, under Grayson's tutelage, he leaned back a few minutes later to watch the bird cheep perplexedly as it eyed its now restrained wing.

It was a unique sensation, working shoulder to shoulder with another to repair damage wrought. Damian had experienced it for the first time since coming to Gotham, working as Robin under Grayson’s Batman, but that repair still required a good deal of violence. This was different. It was strange. He thought he might like it.

The bird—they hadn’t settled on a name, despite increasingly ridiculous and incomprehensible suggestions from Grayson—had been placed under Pennyworth’s watchful eye during patrol, then returned to Damian. The box had stayed in his room overnight, placed on a low stool next to the bed so Damian could look in every time he woke.

After a breakfast of shredded wheat (Damian), Froot Loops (Grayson), and millet (the bird), they climbed into one of the Manor’s cars for the drive to the nearest wildlife center.

Damian watched out the window as the metal and concrete and grime of Gotham slowly diminished and then faded away entirely. The road they followed was braced on either side by rough walls of stone, their striations carved long ago by passing glaciers. The cliff faces, striped with mica and sandstone, soared above the cars, their tops capped in loamy topsoil and thicketed forests of green.  He wondered how they smelled, so different from the dunes he grew up with.

Grayson was still talking, saying something about the care the center had given his childhood bat. There was a joke about the bat never calling and never writing that Damian dismissed. The man’s sense of humor was incomprehensible.

“So you like animals.” Grayson spoke lightly, with no more gravity than the previous joke, but the words still startled Damian. He looked up from the box and over at Grayson, whose gaze was still on the road.

“I find them interesting,” Damian admitted slowly. Expressing interest seemed safe enough. Interests could be encouraged, if seen as useful. Given Grayson’s own childhood story, animal handling and veterinary knowledge were likely to be seen as acceptable.

“Do you have a favorite?”

“No.”

“I like elephants,” Grayson mused. “I grew up in a circus, you know. Animals everywhere. I really liked the monkeys, but the elephants were my favorite.”

“Circuses are an animal rights disaster,” Damian growled, unable to stop himself.

Grayson's fingers tightened on the wheel. Damian braced, but the man only let out a huff akin to a sigh. “Maybe,” he admitted quietly. “I was just a kid when I had to leave. But the memories were good.”

The car went silent. Damian had the unfamiliar, keen prickling of awareness that he had misstepped somehow, in a potentially dangerous way. He puzzled over the feeling during the rest of the drive. What he had said was correct, given the facts as he knew them. He had seen caravans come through, had seen the way the animals had been treated, and knew from what materials he had read on the subject that American traveling carnivals were little different. It rankled him that Grayson would defend such practices on the grounds of sentimentality.

Unbidden, Damian recalled the night before and the story he had confessed the Grayson. Grandfather’s actions had traumatized Damian, plaguing him with memories that he could not be rid of. Grayson had also been visibly horrified. It would not have been out of line nor out of character for him to speak against Grandfather’s ways. But he had not, and Damian had been relieved.

Grayson was pulling into the rehabilitation center parking lot when Damian spoke next.

“It was not my intent to denigrate your upbringing,” Damian said in a low voice.

Grayson’s quick turn of the head denoted surprise, but the easy smile was back once more. “I know. I wasn’t angry.”

The assurance was more of a relief than Damian expected.

A staff member named Hanne met them inside. After examining the little chick and praising them for their work, she took Damian and Grayson deeper into the center to show them where the bird would be rehabilitated. Damian ventured some questions during the tour but otherwise was intent on observing. It did seem to be a well-run facility—clean, bright, and open, with employees who knew the answers to his questions and seemed to genuinely care for the animals.

Still, doubt gnawed at Damian.

“Everything okay?” Grayson asked on their way back to the car.

“Yes,” Damian answered, snapping on instinct. “Why do you ask?”

“You’re being unusually quiet.” Grayson gave a false sort of chuckle. “I mean, fine with me if you don’t want to talk, but... I’ll listen, is all I’m saying.”

Damian stopped and looked back at the center. “How will it find its way back?”

“What?”

He didn’t know what possessed him to ask. He should have just gotten in the car.

“Nothing,” Damian muttered and stomped away.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Grayson was hurrying after him, brow furrowed. “You mean the bird? Find its way back to Gotham?”

Damian scowled as he yanked at the car door. “Unlock the vehicle, Grayson.”

“No, wait, Dames, you asked a question.”

Damian looked up, scowl still firmly in place, to watch as Grayson scrubbed the back of his neck uncertainly. The man needed to be more in control of his own emotions. He was as open as a child.

“Birds have the whole magnetic positioning thing, right? For migration? So it’ll be able to get back if it wants to.” Grayson looked back at the center, then around at the peaceful woods around them and laughed a little. “Do you think it’ll want to, though? Wouldn’t it be happier out here? Set up in the woods, find a pretty girl bird, make a nest?”

The gnawing in the pit of Damian’s stomach deepened. He looked away and trained his eyes on the car door, shoulders stiff. “Its family is not here.”

Maybe the area was objectively better. Maybe the air was cleaner, life more serene and worth living than the helter-skelter filth of Gotham. But the bird hadn’t been born out here. Hadn’t spent its life out here. It had blood ties elsewhere, memories of a place that, while perhaps not the best, was still the familiar and known. Wouldn’t it yearn for that place? Had he done wrong to take it away?”

“No,” Grayson agreed quietly, his voice for once stripped of the brittle warmth Daman usually associated with him. “And maybe it’ll fly back one day. But being born in a place doesn't make it home.”

The car beeped as the door locks popped out of place. Damian took his seat on the passenger side and waited as Grayson slid into his own seat and started the car.

“I think I saw some signs for hiking trails on the way here.” Grayson glanced over at Damian, gauging his reaction as they pulled back onto the road. “What do you think about coming back out here next weekend? We can check out the trails, maybe swing by and check on our friend?”

Damian knew what he was doing. He wasn’t an idiotic child. But knowing the ruse didn’t diminish the flutter of excitement in his chest. “That... would be acceptable.”

Another chuckle from Grayson, this one low and pleased. “I’ll take acceptable. Now, if you promise not to tell Alfred, what do you think about stopping for ice cream on our way back?”

That was deemed acceptable as well. Damian rested his forehead against the window, content once again to watch the passing scenery. A hike in the woods and a sloppy cone of melting vanilla were small comforts that he would trade if given the chance, but since a swap was out of the question, he would accept them for now.

Lulled by the motion of the vehicle and the flickering scenery, Damian’s eyelids began to droop.

“Go to sleep,” Grayson murmured, his voice so soft that it seemed more a dream. “I’ll wake you when we’re home.”

It was foolish not to remain alert, but Grayson could not harm him without at least slowing the car, and Damian would sense that. Besides, he had seen the way Grayson had held the bird, his lean, muscular hands cupping its fragile body as if it were something precious. Hands like that... perhaps those hands could be trusted, at least for now.

So Damian closed his eyes and slept until the towers of Gotham rose around them once more.


End file.
